Launching at the TUC a Trade Union Programme for a Real Labour Government.
The first public meeting of our leadership campaign took place in Manchester last night and was a real success. It's just great to attend a packed meeting again where people were enthusiastic once again about discussing the future of our party.
The meeting focussed on a set of 6 key policy pledges:
1. Withdrawal of British troops from Iraq.
2. End to privatisation.
3. Abolition of student fees and full support for comprehensive education.
4. Restoration of civil liberties and trade union rights.
5. A green energy policy based upon renewable power sources.
6. Increase in the Basic State Pension and the immediate restoration of the earnings link.
The debate was open, serious and friendly. I was struck by the determination of the many party members and trade union members who were so enthusiastic in their support for the policies being advocated by our campaign. A good point was made that we need always to ensure that whilst we undertake a proper critique of New Labour's failures our campaign must remain an overwhelmingly positive one, which acknowledges the advances we have made as a party over the years and more importantly looks to the future.
As one contributor said, she was excited that for the first time in a long time she was now able to go out there and argue from a Labour Party perspective for policies she believed in and supported.
A major section of our party has been virtually ignored by New Labour over the last 9 years. That is the trade union movement.
As Brendan Barber, TUC General Secretary, once commented, New Labour has treated the trade unions like some embarassing member of the family, best hidden from view. The only times New Labour seems to acknowledge the existence of the unions is when the party either needs funds or needs trade unionists on the ground to campaign in elections.
As a result of a historic breakthrough in the co-ordination of trade union influence within the party, the unions secured the famous "Warwick Agreement." This union/Labour Party pact set out a programme of very basic but critically important policy initiatives which New Labour pledged to address in government. Key issues like corporate manslaughter legislation, protection of pensions, the development of a strategy for manufacturing and challenging privatisation.
Many trade unionists will feel totally conned by the performance of New Labour over Warwick. Barely any meaningful progress has been made on the implementation of the major pledges of the Warwick Agreement. The Corporate Manslaughter Bill published by the Government is ineffective. Pensions remain largely unprotected with companies continuing to demolish schemes and withdraw hard fought for benefits. The pace of privatisation of public services and public sector jobs is actually speeding up. Britain's manufcaturing sector is losing so many jobs each year that it is expected the country's manufacturing base will have all but disappeared within the next twenty years.
The setback of New Labour reneging on the Warwick Agreement doesn't mean that the strategy of unions co-ordinating the exercise of their influence on the Government was wrong. The only way in which we will be able to secure the implementation of a trade union agenda is if there is greater and firmer co-ordination of trade union influence on the Labour Party and in Parliament.
That is one of the reasons why I have worked hard over a number of years establishing trade union groups of MPs in Parliament to secure a stronger voice for trade unions in policy making. It is also why I have been at the forefront of developing the strategy for the Trade Union Freedom Bill and why I set up the "Public Services Not Private Profit" campaign with the support of 16 unions.
New Labour may have failed us over Warwick but there is still the need to develop a new trade union/Labour Party pact based upon a clear commitment to its implementation.
At the TUC next week I will be launching a Trade Union Programme for Labour in Government. It includes a commitment to introduce the Trade Union Freedom Bill we have been drafting over the last two years designed to bring the employment rights of trade unionists in Britain up to the same level as workers in other European countries. Other elements of this programme include an end to privatisation of public services and the bringing back of rail and air traffic control into public ownership. In addition the programme commits a Labour Ggovernment to the introduction of a firmer health and safety regime, including an effective corporate manslaughter bill and ensuring that the Health and Safety Executive id properly resourced. The programme includes also the development of an interventionist industrial strategy to protect and develop manufacturing industry.
These are just some elements of my Trade Union Programme for Government. I am launching the programme not only to encourage trade unonists to support the programme's policies but also to launch a debate on what else should trade unions expect from a Labour Government if we are to secure a decent quality of life at work for our members.
Let me hear your proposals.
First off the Starting Blocks in Launch of National Leadership Tour
Now the Sun has been kind enough to inform us of the timetable for the departure of the Prime Minister and the schedule for the process by which a new leader of the Labour party is to be elected I am launching my national leadership campaign tour at a publc rally at the Mechanics Institute in Manchester on Thursday night. Joining me on the platform will be Tony Benn, Alice Mahon, Jeremy Dear NUJ General Secretary and Dave McCall Regional Secretary of TGWU.
We are to be the first off the starting blocks in the election campaign to determine the future leader and therefore the future of our party.
We are following this up with a barrage of fringe meetings at the TUC next week at which I will launch my Trade Union Manifesto and calling for support for a series of policies including:
the trade union freedom bill,
an end to privatisation and restoration of public ownership,
protection of pension rights,
increased state pension and restoration of the earnings link,
a new health and safety regime and quality of life at work legislation,
a peace programme including withdrawal from Iraq, justice for the Palestinians and scrapping of Trident.
I just want to get on with the political debate.
I have to say though that I found it nauseating watching New Labour MPs turn on Blair.Most of them owe their whole existence to Tony Blair and have sycophantically supported often in the most degrading terms every policy he has introduced. They were motivated not by any policy or philosophical disagreement but simply to save their own political skins. Many of them were hand picked by Blair and were parachuted into their seats by the New Labour machine controlled under Blair. They served as his boot boys in Parliament or in the media whenever grovelling sophistry was needed to crowd out real debate.
They still haven't got the message though have they?
The reason Blair is unpopular is not the individual but the failed policies that he stands for and the style of government New Labour has introduced where trust has been coroded by spin and dishonesty. A change of leader without the fundamental break with New Labour, its policies and its politics risks not just the loss of office but the potential of a party broken and in the wilderness for a generation.
Many Labour MPs cling to the hope that they can pull off the same strategy as John Major after Thatcher i.e. changing the leader and clinging on to office at the subsequent election.
There are a number of fundamental flaws in this comparison.
First no recent poll has suggested that a change of leader to Brown or Reid or any cabinet member would lead to a lift in support.
Second Major had the odd advantage of relative anonymity and hence a significant avoidance of guilt by association with the worst excesses of Thatcher. Brown and Reid and others are all irrevocably tainted with New Labour.
And third the opposition to Major was Neil Kinnock, who was never seen as a popular or competent alternative. It is a truism that oppositions do not win elections but governments lose them. Then all oppositions have to do is to be seen to be a safe pair of hands to catch disillusioned voters. Cameron is following exactly that strategy.
My fear is that all sorts of grubby manoeuvres will be attempted to prevent members of the party being able to participate in the political debate about our policies and future in Government. I will do all I can to lay the foundations of this critically important process of political engagement. I urge all party members and supporters to become involved but also to make it clear to MPs and others that we demand an election for the leader which enables this debate to happen and not some one candidate election reminiscent of past Stalinist regimes.
Come along to Manchester if you can and have your say. See you there.
End the Blair and Brown Faction Fighting and Start the Leadership Debate
The Sunday Papers are saturated with the sparring between Blair's outriders, Byers and Milburn, versus Brown's appointees, Ed Balls and others. New Labour politics is looking more like an episode of "The Sopranos" than a political party seeking to repesent its members and govern the country.
On the one hand we have Byers and Milburn calling for a debate on the future of New Labour. This is clearly just a transparent attempt to play for time, keeping Tony Blair in power for as long as possible and in the hope that events may come to pass which either allow him to stay or facilitate the emergence of an annointed Blairite successor such as John Reid or anyone who is basically not Gordon Brown.
On the other hand we have Balls et al desperately arguing for "a stable and orderly transition" and denouncing any debate within the party as either "internal navel gazing" or a dangerous process when "factions" take hold. The Balls' logic is that there are "no fundamental divides" in the Labour Party and therefore there is no need for a debate within the party because we are all so united behind Gordon Brown's New Labour policies.
It seems almost inpolite to intrude on this internal infighting between the factions of New Labour but most of us Labour Party members are looking on aghast at these antics. The very people who are excluded from this critical debate on the future of the Labour Party appear to be its members. The "poor bloody infantry" of the Labour party who deliver the leaflets, sustain us with their contributions through their party and trade union subs and who undeservedly lose their seats on councils because of the unpopular policies of the New Labour leadership are all being prevented from having any realistic say.
The political argument between the militant tendencies of Blair and Brown also fails to address the real life issues the vast majority of our members are facing and the ideals which motivated them to become part of our movement.
When the Blair and Brown factions trade blows over issues like employment, globalisation, taxation, pensions, reform of public services, the environment and foreign policy, they speak in terms which are totally unrelated to the real life experiences or aims of the vast proportion of our members and supporters.
Employment for the many is increasingly insecure, unrewarding and stressful. Ministers' speeches extolling the virtues of globalisation and exhorting workers to embrace flexibile employment whilst refusing to address rights at work just ring hollow.
Policies which increase the retirement age and fail to protect workers' pensions whilst at the same time turning a blind eye to allowing company bosses walk off with massive pension pots prompt questions about the links between New Labour and big business.
Most see through New Labour calls for reform and modernisation and have come to understand that public service reform for both Blair and Brown means public service privatisation in all its different guises of sell offs, PFI, and the latest laughable euphemism of "contestablility."
Labour Party supporters also experience the consequences of our grotesquely unequal society, where cumulative disadvantage produces communities where life expectancy itself can differ by as much as 15 years beween rich and poor and educational opportunities increasingly under New Labour are accessed by fee paying.
Many New Labour ministers would do well to read Professor Richard Wlkinson's insightful work "The Impact of Inequality" which sets out in detail the wide ranging research linking many of the malaises of our society to inequality.
Labour Party members will not tolerate for much longer the unseemly public rucking between the Blair and Brown factions which puts next year's elections at risk and gives such an open goal to Cameron. In addition they will not accept being sidelined in any debate about the future leadership of the party and its future political direction.
Both Blair and Brown courtiers need to be reminded that this party belongs to its members not some New Labour Westminster elite.
Party members and supporters must have the opportunity to participate fully in the future of Labour debate. Neither the argument by Brown supporters against any debate nor the call by Blair supporters for a debate to delay change are sustainable.
I have consistently called for Blair to go. I announced that I would stand for leader of the party so that members and supporters would be given the chance of debating and having a choice over the future of the party. So my position on Blair is clear. But if we have to find a way forward before the Blair and Brown factions plunge our party into a civil war at a minimum it is critical that a timetable is set for this debate to take place with an assurance that if Blair will not go now then either the election for a new leader commences before the Scottish and Welsh elections next year or a clear announcement of a timetable is made before those elections. This should be the minimum demand of Labour MPs, trade union representatives and party bodies.
The New Labour and journalistic elite are undertaking their usual exercise of arrogantly and complacently dismissing any challenge from outside their coterie as hopeless. I believe that their inability to look beyond their inner London dinner party circuit leads them to completely underestimate the scale of support amongst rank and file Labour party members and trade unionists for a challenge to the New Labour narrow consensus.
Let's surprise them.
A Message of Solidarity to the Firefighters in Dispute in Liverpool
I send a message of support to the firefighters taking industrial action in Liverpool. No firefighter takes industrial action lightly but there comes a time when they see their service being put at risk and neither management nor government is willing to listen and so they have no alternative. That is what is happening in Liverpool and increasingly in other fire authority areas, as we saw in Hertfordshire only weeks ago.
Disputes are breaking out in various areas across the country as the local fire authorities develop their local integrated risk management plans. The Government has scrapped national fire safety standards and has withdrawn from any role in monitoring or enforcing any national performance levels. Instead local fire authorities have the responsibility to produce a local risk management plan, setting out local staffing levels and the level and type of service needed within their areas.
Some fire authorities have seen this as an opportunity to cut firefighter jobs, remove pumps and close fire stations.
The Government has washed its hands of setting national standards to which local fire authorities must adhere or of intervening to ensure fire authorities abide by any particular minimum level of staffing. The result is that in some areas local managers are riding roughshod over the views and experience of their front line staff.
The fear is that cutting firefighter jobs in LIverpool or anywhere else will put lives at risk. That is why I fully support the FBU not only in the industrial action its members are taking in Liverpool but also in calling upon management of the fire authority to engage in meaningful talks to resolve this dispute.
Changing Leader is Futile without Changing Policies
Many Labour MPs who have supported Blair for over a decade and voted for virtually every policy he has put in front of them have suddenly woken up to the need for Blair to go.
For some it is a fairly desperate attempt to save their seats which successive polls now clearly demonstrate are threatened at the next election. For others it is just Brown's accolytes stirring in the background for their man to succeed Blair sooner rather than later.
All this is pretty cynical and more importantly pretty futile.
Of course Blair's position is increasingly unsustainable but changing the leader is futile without changing the policies.
To coin a phrase "it's the policies stupid."
The challenge to those MPs who are calling for Blair to go is what changes in Labour's policies and political direction do they want to see after Blair?
What is their post Blair agenda?
If their resignation calls are simply to change Blair for Brown, the architect of most of New Labour's policies, many may well ask what's the point? There would be no change in policies and as a result no effect on the electoral unpopularity of New Labour.
Yes Blair should go but if Labour is to survive in Government there must also be a radical break with the neo con politics of New Labour.
Bring on the leadership election and let's have that debate on the policies not personalities.
Launching at the TUC a Trade Union Programme for a...
First off the Starting Blocks in Launch of Nationa...
End the Blair and Brown Faction Fighting and Star...
A Message of Solidarity to the Firefighters in Dis...
Changing Leader is Futile without Changing Policie...